


After the Fall

by orphan_account



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-05
Updated: 2013-01-05
Packaged: 2017-11-23 20:11:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/626065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A character study on Lestrade after the Reichenbach Fall. </p>
<p>Note that there are spoilers for the end of the episode, so don't read this if you haven't watched that far yet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After the Fall

Detective Inspector Lestrade sat in a plain chair behind a plain desk in a plain office. Everything in the room was exactly as stark and serious as the man himself, except for the brightly colored tabloid newspaper in his hands.

The front declared the _SUICIDE OF FAKE GENIUS._

Lestrade wasn’t looking at it.

Although it had never been spoken aloud, it was clear to him that Sherlock’s death had been his fault. He knew that both John and Mycroft blamed him for it, even if neither of them had ever mentioned it specifically. Lestrade knew they were right; if he hadn’t let Anderson and Sally get inside his head, nagging their little doubts at him, perhaps the events would not have snowballed out of control. But it wasn’t their fault, not really. They had just been doing what they thought was right. And that was the problem, wasn’t it? Sherlock never worked by the law, he worked by what he saw as _right_ , and it never seemed to match up with regular people’s morals.

As it was, they had found a puddle of blood at St. Bart’s, and a cigarette stub and a gun, and no body. Someone had been shot on that roof but the only thing Lestrade’s division knew for sure was that the blood belonged to Moriarty. The cigarette stub had been stomped underneath a shoe or boot, so there wasn’t any DNA to test. And where the hell was the body?

The theory going around was that Sherlock had somehow convinced Richard Brooke to shoot himself- not unlike that cabbie, and look what happened to him, doesn’t it just reek of guilt- and then offed himself by diving over the ledge. He’d obviously had an accomplice take the body away.

The first person the press had looked to on that account was John, but Lestrade had stepped in and stopped them. The last thing the doctor needed was hounds at his doorstep, aiming cameras and microphones and recorders at him when all he wanted to do was grieve the loss of a friend. Lestrade knew the feeling- not of the paparazzi, of course, but certainly the bereavement. He’d attended too many funerals in his lifetime, far too many. Inspectors, good men and women all of them, who’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The front of the tabloid declared the _SUICIDE OF FAKE GENIUS._

Lestrade wasn’t looking at it.


End file.
